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TEACHING 
HOOL-CHILDREN 
TO THINK 



/ 



^ at the Meeting of the New York Society of Pedagogy, May 25, 1889 



GEORGE B. NEWCOMB, Ph.D. 

•ssor of Moral and Intellectual Philosophy in the College of the City of New York 



r PUBLISHED FOR THE SOCIETY 



NEW YORK: D. APPLETON AND COMPANY 



LRiOSS 



COPTBIGHT, 1889, 

Bt the new YORK SOCIETY OF PEDAGOGY. 



\ 



3v 



^ TEACHING SCHOOL-CHILDREN TO THINK. 



The faith of the American people in their system of 
common-school instruction is evidenced by the vigor and 
keenness with which its methods and results are often 
criticised, hardly less than by the liberality of the expendi- 
tures for popular education. 

Of these criticisms none is more frequently urged than 
one which alleges, in substance, that the children of our 
public schools are not sufficiently " taught to think." One 
critic, for example, deploring the attention given to mem- 
orizing, would prefer " anything that sets the inner wheels 
of thought at work ; that compels the children to reason 
and work out things for themselves." Another notices 
" too much imitation," and thinks too much time is given 
to storing up facts, instead of developing the reasoning 
powers. It is indeed a danger incident to the instruction 
of children gathered together in any considerable number, 
that the methods used may insensibly become too mechani- 
cal; that the drilling of classes may interfere with the 
natural unfolding of individual minds ; the acquisition of a 
certain stock of the subject-matter of knowledge being se- 
cured at the expense of the development of independent 
mental power, of intellectual efficiency. In a vast and 
complicated system of popular education the necessity for 
system and effectual co-operation in the parts of the organi- 
zation naturally increases the difficulty noticed. A Hindoo 
proverb runs that " every undertaking is involved in its 



2 TEACHING SCHOOL-CHILDREN TO THINK. 

faults, as a fire in its smoke " ; and it is not likely that any. 
attainable improvement, either in theories or methods, 
would carry our great educational undertakings to a point 
of success where certain faults, incidental to their magni- 
tude and complexity, would not at all be apparent. But 
those actively engaged in teaching in the public schools, 
as are the members of this Society, are most ready to 
recognize the fact that much is yet attainable in the way 
of improving our educational theories and methods. The 
topic set forth in the title of this paper opens only too 
broad an outlook for inquiry. It has been selected, how- 
ever, as appropriate for an initial discussion in the newly- 
formed "Society of Pedagogy." Two important lines of 
inquiry are suggested by our topic. The first is. What is 
that capacity and exercise of mind which is indicated by 
the terms " thought " and " thinking " ; and in what sense 
or within what limits, if any, should the development of 
"thought" be a prominent aim in the training of school- 
children ? The next inquiry would involve the considera- 
tion of ways and means for the development of rational 
intelligence in the pupil. Its full treatment would require 
nothing less than a systematic discussion of courses of 
study, which, of course, could not be attempted within the 
limits of this paper. We shall, therefore, aim under that 
head only to enunciate broad principles, or to make helpful 
suggestions, without entering into details of pedagogic 
method except by way of occasional illustration. 

The first inquiry is of fundamental importance. The 
term thought^ as commonly used, having a vague connota- 
tion, it is needful to indicate precisely what is here meant 
by thinking as a form of mental activity, and to consider 
how far the activity described is to be expected or desired 
in the case of children of the school age. 

The faculty or activity to be considered is that which 



TEACHINa SCHOOL-CHILDREN TO THINK. 3 

is described, poetically, as " Eeason, the power of large dis- 
course, looking before and after " ; prosaically and collo- 
quially, as the ability "to put two and two together"; 
psychologically, as the capacity to form and apply general 
conceptions. By writers on psychology the term " thought " 
is frequently "used for conception or the grasp of the 
general or universal in knowledge." Thought, in its fully 
developed stage, includes all those subtle processes of 
mediate knowledge, in the use of which the human creature 
rises superior to sense, and is capable of philosophy, sci- 
ence, and inventions. 

But, if its full psychological connotation be given to 
the term " thought," there is an obvious incongruity be- 
tween the powers of the child of from six to twelve years 
of age, and the proposed task of " Training to Think." 
(Especially is this the case if one has failed to note a dis- 
tinction between the conscious and the unconscious em- 
ployment of inference and other logical processes.) There 
is obviously a sense in which teaching the young pupil to 
think would, if it were practicable, involve an inversion of 
the natural order of mental development, viz., from sense, 
through memory and imagination, to reasoning. 

The history of pedagogic philosophy and practice af- 
fords, indeed, illustrations of extreme views in opposite 
directions in regard to the culture of the rational powers 
in early years. Educational reformers, from the Eenais- 
sance onward, protested, as with one voice, against the 
barren routine of memorizing which had become the gen- 
eral mental discipline for school-children ; but this protest 
was often made from extreme reactionary points of view, 
now in the interest of the education of the senses only, 
again with an exaggerated emphasis on the training of the 
reasoning powers. 

The dreary maxim of an ancient writer, that " the ele- 



4 TEACHING SCHOOL-CHILDREN TO THINK. 

ments of learning demand only memory," had been prac- 
tically accepted, and the memory of children was regarded 
as a pack-horse to receive burdens which could be utilized 
only in later years. It was with no less justice than bitter- 
ness that Montaigne complained of the education of his 
period, that " we labor only at filling the memory and leave 
the understanding and the conscience void." The natural 
impulse of return from a discipline of words to the knowl- 
edge of the things themselves, especially favored education 
of the perceptions. Such a thinker, however, as the idealist 
metaphysician Malebranche, setting no limits to the innate 
powers of the mind, found no reason why the loftiest 
abstractions should not be taught to children. Locke 
carries so far the revolt against the traditional method as 
to discard all set endeavors to train memory. While recog- 
nizing very fully the claims of the senses, he advocates 
also " reasoning with children " in what seems, indeed, a 
moderate and sensible degree ; * yet the recommendation 
excites the ire of Rousseau, who recognizes nothing in the 
child's mind but the faculties of sense, and declares he 
" would as soon require that a child be five feet high as 
that he reason at the age of eight." Yet for the observa- 
tion which Eousseau would inculcate in childhood, there 
was needed something of that rational element which 
Locke's pedagogy aimed to develop. 

There have been numerous examples in educational 
practice of attempts to tax the young mind with subjects 
beyond its powers, and of the employment of educational 
methods which, so far as successful, would involve a forced 



* Thus Locke remarks in recommending reasoning with children* 
about conduct : " They understand it as early as they do language 
and, if I misobserve not, they love to be treated as rational creatures 
sooner than is imagined." — Of Education^ % 81. 



TEACHING SCHOOL-CHILDREN TO THINK. 6 

development of the reflective processes. The training to 
which James Mill, in conformity with Bentham's con- 
ceptions of education, subjected his gifted son, would prove 
a failure in the case of most children, since the presenta- 
tion of ideas for which the mind is not ready can generally 
produce only barren memory-work. True, a John Stuart 
Mill appeared to prove the rule by exception. The higher 
mathematics formed a considerable part of his childish 
studies ; logic entered into his intellectual diet at twelve, 
and at thirteen he was making a kind of treatise on politi- 
cal economy and abstracting Ricardo.* But, in his auto- 
biography, Mr. J. S. Mill records with a certain regret 
that " the course of my intellectual cultivation had made 
precocious and premature analysis the inveterate habit of 
my mind." There are sporadic examples of the meta- 
physically-inclined child : such a one startled a parent by 
abruptly inquiring, " How do you know anything is there 
where you see it?" Such premature buddings of the 
philosophic consciousness are, however, not to be fostered. 
The " Record" of A. B. Alcott's school, by Miss Peabody, 
furnishes some remarkable instances of apparent success 
in training children to introspective effort — a success 
partly to be explained by the practical interest in the 
ethical issues raised, partly due to the special genius and 
enthusiasm of the teacher. 

There has, however, been no noticeable tendency in 
recent pedagogy to force the child's attention upon the 
abstractions of mental and moral philosophy, whatever 
may have been the case as regards the abstractions of sci- 
ence. If any recently held theory of teaching has erred 
in the direction of excessive demands ujDon the reflective 
or reasoning powers, it has been one which aimed to 

* Bain's " J. S. Mill," pp. 7, 8. 



6 TEACHING SCHOOL-CHILDREN TO THINK. 

secure conscious analysis and reasoned demonstration by 
the child of every process gone through in arithmetic, 
grammar, etc.* A distinguished American educator, 
sketching the course of educational tendencies in this 
country, f observed that there had been at one period "an 
oscillation from the prescriptive extreme to the ratiocina- 
tive ; from learning things and facts without their causes 
and reasons to the extreme in which nothing should be 
taught without all its grounds." In the ordinary studies 
there may be an undue effort at direct training of the 
logical powers. An error is made in seeking to anticipate 
the development of the logical method of thought ; even a 
more frequent error is that of treating highly abstract con- 
cepts as if they were simple, because their names are in com- 
mon use. Thus, in an account of observations made by him 
upon deaf-mute children, Preyer observes that " notlmig, 
leing dead, space, are concepts of a high order for them." 

There is evidently a practicable mean between the 
training which forces the development of reflective power, 
and one which would limit the child's education to mem- 
ory, or to sense and memory culture. 

It is certain that the juvenile mind is not to be treated 
as a mere knowledge-box, to be packed with intellectual 
supplies which may be brought out and assimilated as 
the journey of life develops at once the appetite and the 
capacity. 

Nor, on the other hand, is the child a "little Des- 
cartes," to accept nothing which he has not for himself 



* An American educational writer remarks, " It is a mistake to 
spend a large amount of time and effort in requiring young children 
formally to explain the rationale of their intellectual processes." 

f Dr. W. T. Harris, in " Report of St. Louis Public Schools, 
1871." 



TEACHING SCHOOL-CHILDREN TO THINK. 7 

proved ; nor is lie to be nourished intellectually by ab- 
struse trains of thought, of which in fact he can not gen- 
erally comprehend even the terms. 

Yet long before " Reasoning," strictly so called, is de- 
veloped, there is Rationality ; the exercise of intelligence 
in unifying the scattered particulars of sense; in corre- 
lating facts and lighting up one fact by another. 

In fact, rationality is all alive in the child's mind, in 
the curiosity that so often vainly asks the reason why, and 
often dies down into indifference and apathy because the 
once-eager inquirer found no aid or encouragement in his 
efforts to " read the riddle of the world." 

The rational, the relation-giving faculty, is by no means 
confined to highly abstract ideas and processes. There 
is an abundance of satisfaction for this faculty not only 
within the reach of the child's powers, but eagerly desired 
and sought for — from the first exhibition of that curiosity 
which, however crude and intermittent, testifies to a real 
interest in the relation of parts and wholes, and the 
behavior of things toward one another. 

While children evince unmistakably a dislike for re- 
mote abstractions, and possess a low degree of abstractive 
power, it is an error to regard them as incapable of gen- 
eral thought and rational connecting, even at very early 
periods. The child which at first "played like a cat, 
being amused with color, form, and movement," has soon 
its attention arrested by the connections and relations of 
things, and begins to try in a fitful and puzzled way to 
make them out for itself. It makes crude and often 
futile attempts at rational sjnithesis ; tentative and feeble 
"guesses at truth"; to abstract and generalize after a 
primitive fashion the child is only too ready. He appears 
often eager to name, to classify ; to reduce, as it were, the 
irritating multiplicity and conflict of his sensations into 



8 TEACHING SCHOOL-CHILDREN TO THINK. 

some sort of harmony of apprehension. *'It is some- 
thmg ! " he declares, grasping at once the summum genus 
of generahzation, when he lacks ability to place an im- 
pression with any precision. The category of resemblance 
is used freely and vaguely ; progress in knowledge is made 
through a rapid and rough synthesis, which is analyzed and 
corrected by means of closer acquaintance with objects.* 

Rosmini, in his " Method in Education," f has devoted 
much attention to the child's mode of thinking, enforcing 
his view with interesting illustrations. "It is certain," 
he declares, " that the more ideas are general, the more 
congenial and familiar they are to the human mind, pro- 
vided they express only immediate abstractions — that is, 
such as denote a common element in the sensible things 
perceived by us. The case would be changed if the ab- 
stractions were such as are formed by the mind upon pre- 
vious abstractions, and which we have termed abstractions 
from abstractions." Thus the child " could never under- 
stand the meaning of the words laio^ justice^ etc." 

The abstractions which can be used are those which 
are not too far removed from the concrete. Scientific 
knowledge must, therefore, come to the young pupil more 
or less immersed in sense. For example, says Rosmini, J 
" the child forms his conceptions of a plant from seeing 
it growing in the ground, from its green color, from the 
common form of plants, from the cool, damp feeling of 
the leaves, etc. This is not and can not be expected to 
be the conception of the philosopher." Our author goes 

* However vague the child's concept may be, however deficient 
in exactness and true logical generality, it can yet represent " intel- 
lection " — the search after truth. 

t Cf. pp. 120, 121, etc. 

Jib., pp. 123, 124. 



TEACHING SCHOOL-CHILDREN TO THINK. 9 

on to compare the specific abstraction of a plant as made 
by the philosopher with that in the mind of the little 
pupil, and concludes that " it would be a blunder to clas- 
sify plants for him by seeding and germination. He does 
not want a classification of that which germinates, but of 
that which is planted in the ground mid grows."*^ 

The instruction of children in science must be given, 
then, in a form modified to meet the limitations of their 
mental development. In conformity with this principle, 
a course of study in the natural sciences in the St. Louis 
Public Schools was spirally arranged, so as to cover sub- 
stantially the same ground at three successive periods, with 
an increasing abstractness as well as fullness of treatment 
as the age of the learner advanced. Children are readily 
interested in the facts and phenomena of science, but to 
grasp subtle and abstruse relations and to give protracted 
attention to reasoned processes of thought is as difficult 
for them in scientific subjects as in any others. 

That the reasoning powers should not be stimulated 
too early, affords no ground for failure to recognize the 
demands of the child's rationality, within the natural 
limits of its exercise, or for postponing a development and 
extension of reason which should go forward in graduated 
advance, in connection with that culture of the senses and 
the memory which necessarily predominates in children's 
education. Distinctly should we recognize the principle, 
so well stated by M. Compayre, that "all the faculties 
awaken at the same time in the human intelligence, but 
they do not advance at the same pace." 

Hence, the object-lessons given to young children 
should not be desultory presentations of isolated facts, but 
so arranged as to facilitate the growing apprehension of 
Nature as an organized system. The acquisition of infor- 
mation should not be pushed on at a rate which so taxes 



10 TEACHIXG SCHOOL-CHILDREN TO THIXIC 

memory as to suppress or leave no room for the instinctive 
efforts of mind to make out sigjiificance in the connection 
of objects, events, ideas. While all can not be compre- 
hended or explained, the natural curiosity concerning rela- 
tions, causes, and reasons, should find at least enough satis- 
faction to keep it awake and expectant, and the child 
should be encouraged in seeking to form its own ideas from 
its own experience.* (The new methods in primary train- 
ing, properly administered, are admirably calculated to pro- 
mote this original mental effort.) As reason strengthens, 
the analysis of ideas which the study of language involves 
naturally aids its development, and the study of grammar 
and of arithmetical problems, in the upper gi-ades of the 
common schools, is properly prop^deutical to that express 
culture of the logical power and elaboration by reasoning 
of the ideas abeady acquired, which especially belongs to 
the high-school or more advanced stage of education. 

If the distinction be sufficiently emphasized between 
the primitive and more advanced steps in the development 
of " thought," and especially between the simple exercise 
of rationality and the consciously elaborated train of rea- 
soning, few will question that children should be " taught 
to think " or reason. Xor will the claim that rationality 
should be developed in its degree at every step of educa- 
tion, be regarded as inconsistent with the now generally 
accepted pedagogic maxim that the years spent in the 
common school should be especially devoted to training 

* In regard to ans^vering the questions of young children, Preyer 
writes : " I have from the beginning given to my boy, to the best of 
my knowledge, invariably, an answer to his questions intelligible to 
him and not contrary to truth; and have noticed that, in conse- 
quence, at a later period, in the fifth and especially in the seventh 
year, the questions prove to be more and more intelligent, because 
the previous answers are retained." — " The Mind of the Child," p. 218. 



TEACHING SCHOOL-CHILDREN TO THINK. 11 

in observation, memory, and imagination, since the rational 
culture of these powers is now generally insisted on. 
Thus, Prof. W. T. Hams, writing of education in observa- 
tion, remarks that observation " is only taught by leading 
the pupil to tliiiik^ since the process is one of analysis and 
classification and of tracing causal relations." 

Indeed, without educing some insight, some revision 
of sense by thought, how can one teach in a living way 
either to observe or to remember? It is but "looking 
without seeing," if one does not see things somewhat in 
their place, relation, significance ; and, so seen, they recall 
themselves by the strongest — that is to say the rational — 
laws of association. 

In dealing with the second branch of our topic, namely, 
how to awaken, stimulate, or aid the development of 
thought in the minds of children, time forbids me to un- 
dertake more than the presentation and illustration of cer- 
tain important general principles, which I hope to treat in 
a way to suggest thought and elicit discussion. 

First, negatively, it is of great importance that the 
teacher should not allow, should constantly be on the watch 
against, habits of thoughtless or irrational mental action, 
if a paradoxical expression may be permitted. There is a 
frequent fusion of ideas and images in the pujDil's mind 
which is the opposite of thought ; a synthesis which is non- 
intellectual. The teacher is often bafiQed in his efforts by 
this simulation of thinking in the child's mind — a merely 
accidental jumble of ideas, names, images, which, substi- 
tuting itself for mental action proper, actually hinders 
genuine thought from emerging. This is a case of auto- 
matic association. Locke, in his " Essay," points out the 
misleading effects of a " tying together of ideas," which is 
" wholly owing to chance or custom," and advises educators 
" diligently to watch, and carefully to prevent, the undue 



12 TEACHING SCHOOL-CHILDREN TO THINK. 

connection of ideas in the minds of young people." It is 
Locke, also, who is fond of reminding us, as in his " Educa- 
tion," that " children love to be busy " ; and in this fact lies 
a reason why so many odd and persistent irrational connec- 
tions of ideas are formed in their minds. When reason is 
not at work, the contents of the mind will, as it were, form 
their own accidental combinations. Again, when the mind, 
being not awake nor disposed to exert itself, is called upon 
to answer, an association by contiguity takes the place of in- 
tellectual action, nervous and muscular associations even 
respond, with results such as are often brought to view in 
" crammed " examinations. How else, for example, account 
for this kaleidoscopic jumble brought out, by a question in 
an examination on the Scriptures, by her Majesty's In- 
spector of Schools ? — 

" Write an account of the good Samaritan." 

"A certain man went down from Jerslem to Jeriker and he fell 
among thawns, and the thawns sprang up and choked him. Where- 
upon he gave tuppins to the hoast and said tak care on him and put 
him on his hone hass. And he past by on the hother side." — {Lori- 
don Times.) 

When reason is out of the way, mechanical association 
steps in and works mischief. Generally, howevef, there 
does occur a mixture of lucidity with the accidental unrea- 
son. Take as an example of this the case of the young man 
of Nantucket. Unable to think of an effective device for a 
ring designed for his intended, he consulted his father, who 
suggested "When this you see, remember me." Follow- 
ing this advice, semi-reasonably, the young man presented 
a ring inscribed " When this you see, remember father " ! 

Such absurdities in alleged mental action are worth 
our attending to, for what they suggest as to the ways in 
which true mental action is interfered with, and intel- 
lectual development hindered. 



TEACHING SCHOOL-CHILDREN TO THINK. 13 

To counteract the tendency to irrational association, 
tlie evils must be understood and watched against. But, 
after all, they are largely symptomatic of defective train- 
ing, and the remedy is chiefly of a positive character. 

The mischief occurs mainly because the rational povrers 
are not awake and interested. To quote Locke again, 
" Knowledge is grateful to the understanding, as light to 
the eyes " ; but minds which are not enlightened and 
nourished, will act in an idle and mechanical fashion. 
When knowledge is habitually set before the mind in a 
scrappy manner ; when what is received is not organized 
and quickened as part of a growing whole, then the reason 
is not fed; it falls asleep; the mind becomes inert or 
frivolous, taking in its daily lessons as a task of words or 
intermittently apprehended ideas, and giving them out 
again quite undigested. 

Excessive " cramming," by habituating the learner to 
a divorce between words and ideas or objects, tends to 
develop irrationality in the learning process, and to con- 
tribute to a result which has been stigmatized as "The 
Artificial Production of Stupidity in Schools." 

Discoursing of these difficulties and the proper mode 
of treating them, we have already come in sight of a most 
important principle in the positive work of training pu- 
pils to think. It is that the different subject-matters of 
instruction are to be presented in such a manner as to 
secure unity of impression, and preserve a certain conti- 
nuity of thought on the part of the learner. In other 
words, there must be not only in the prescribed plan of 
studies, but in that general perspective and that articu- 
lation of parts which is furnished only by the art of the 
living teacher, a logical method which will encourage the 
pupil's mind to rational activity, by constantly affording 
new insight into the unity and correlation of facts ; con- 



14 TEACHING SCHOOL-CHILDREN TO THINK. 

stantly gratifying tliat " pervading sense of order " which, 
as Lotze observes, "is the essential feature of human 
thought." 

"What wearies children," remarks Madame Necker, 
" is to make them jump over intermediate parts." Frag- 
mentary presentations of facts or ideas reflect the universe 
rather as chaos than cosmos, and discourage, or at least 
fail to assist, the child in incorporating what is offered 
into the organic life of his own mind. 

Things which lie on the mind as disjecta membra oi 
knowledge, with no perceptible bond of connection, do not 
become domesticated, do not enter into and strengthen the 
rational power ; only as facts are received in their relation 
to a whole does there arise an intellectual " correspond- 
ence between the organism and its environment." There 
occur, of course, many practical difficulties in an attempt 
to co-ordinate branches of study, to avoid abrupt transi- 
tions, to bridge gaps, etc. ; but the main point, after all, is 
to secure such unity of conception and aim in the teach- 
er's mind as to inspire and give confidence to the pupil. 

Such a book as one recently published, on " How to 
Study Geography" (written by Francis TV. Parker), is 
helpful not merely as regards modes of instruction in this 
subject, but as illustrating in a broad way Jacotot's peda- 
gogic maxim, that one hooh contains all hooks, or that all 
is in all. 

The knowledge of structure and climate being made 
the basis of all geographical instruction, the author gives 
exercises and suggestions which illustrate how the teach- 
ing of geography may be made quickening to thought, 
and the means of instruction in almost every branch of 
knowledge. Thus physical, economic, and political feat- 
ures are explained genetically, and in their interrelations ; 
as for example, how rivers rise and run, and in due order 



TEACHING SCHOOL-CHILDREN TO THINK. 15 

how, where, and why cities rise and grow along them. 
(Note the contrast with the inverted order of conception 
prevailing in the school-boy's mind, who, in his composi- 
tion, remarked on the providential beneficence evinced 
in the fact that great rivers generally were found in the 
neighborhood of great cities !) Natural and moral facts 
are set forth in their geographical connections, and other 
branches of study are usefully employed in prosecuting 
this : it is pointed out, for instance, how the measurement 
and comparison of geographical distances may furnish a 
large variety of practical, and, consequently, especially in- 
teresting exercises in arithmetic. This method of teach- 
ing geography will indicate a general direction in which 
our new education is aiming, viz., to lead the pupil to 
form a habit of looking for the relation of every fact to 
the whole. In proportion as this aim is carried out, all 
subjects of study lead into and light up one another. 

Whatever topic be the starting-point, the aim is one, 
viz., not the communication of scraps of information, but 
the forming in the pupil's mind of a growing conception 
of life and the universe; a growing body of harmonized 
knowledge, in which each new item falls into its place, 
and is accepted with satisfaction as a sensible addition to 
the mind. Thus the mind will be kept alive and ex- 
pectant by the sense of a gradually increasing correspond- 
ence between itself and the universe. Knowledge will 
compose one world-picture in which the experience of the 
race is gradually becoming reflected in the unfolding 
mind. Unity of conception in the teacher's mind will cer- 
tainly tend to insure unity of impression in the learner's ; 
so far as this can be secured it will do away with that 
weariness which is produced in the learner's mind, by 
being abruptly summoned from one to another tract of 
knowledge without any natural transition. Instead of 



16 TEACHING SCHOOL-CHILDREN TO THINK. 

occasioning an interruption, the change from one subject 
to another should increase interest, as presenting a new 
aspect of that unity amid diversity which is always grate- 
ful to our intelligence. 

Books and explanations, however, are not all that is 
necessary to teach children to think, and especially to 
think for themselves. For, essentially self -active though 
thought is, we may take a distinction even between thinking 
and thinking for one's self. We find an apparent ability 
to follow a train of thought in minds which do not readily 
take an initiative. We can not be satisfied, however, with 
a merely docile and sheep-like intelligence, which knows 
how to trace the footsteps of an intellectual guide, but 
not how to shape any course for itself. A good educator 
seeks in a measure to efface himself and bring his charge 
to intellectual independence, and how this may be done is 
next to be considered. The teacher has to contend against 
that acquiescent and imitative disposition in the pupil 
which is often due to his dread of " the trouble of initia- 
tion — the throes of originality." 

It is difficult either to keep or to delineate the safe 
middle way between an undue predominance of the 
teacher's personality and a deficiency in that influence 
which the teaching intelligence should exert upon the 
taught. Not wisely shall we too literally accept Kousseau's 
laissez-faire educational policy, as marked out for his 
Emile, who, as a boy, is left mostly to nature, with a tutor 
in the rear to be called on in case of difficulty. Much is to 
be expected from the new movement to connect the study 
of words with things, and to keep up in the school-room 
a greatly needed connection with the realities of the ex- 
ternal world. Yet there is ground to apprehend that too 
much is sometimes expected from the mere presentation 
of tangible facts, and that, in the emphasis laid upon the 



TEACHING SCHOOL-CHILDREN TO THINK. 17 

efficiency of apparatus for teacliing through the senses, 
we may overlook the indispensable importance of that 
illuminating and kindling power which can emanate from 
the teaching intelligence. 

Wise was the Talmudic saying that " no man hath 
quickened his own soul." The thought of living teachers 
awakens dormant powers of thought. President Gar- 
field held that such intellectual influence as that of 
Mark Hopkins was a more potent educational force 
than any material aids which money could secure to a 
college. 

There is certainly nothing which can compensate for 
the absence of a living, working, and earnest intelligence 
in the teacher. As an example and an inspiration the 
teacher must lead the way if his disciples are to make 
daily progress in intelligence. An inert mind, even one 
which, well furnished at the start, has ceased to make ad- 
vances, lacks that incitive power which unconsciously 
radiates as it were from a mind nourished with fresh 
acquisitions, and glowing with healthy exercise. The 
teacher who is content to be a mere policeman of the 
school-room, can secure certain mechanical results ; but if 
his pupils learn to think, they will not owe it to him. 
The desk of the pedagogue ought never to be a refuge for 
the sleepy-head ! The child so much needs to feel a vital 
current from that source, acting on him as the living 
world might when he comes face to face with its urgencies 
and necessities ; brushing away the mists of reverie as they 
arise, enforcing watchful scrutinies, and a discriminative 
and selecting attention. 

Yet, while the teacher's mission is work, it is always to 
be remembered that he can not do the pupil's work for 
him ; and he may not forget that the object of his action 
upon the latter's mind is to awaken a reaction. 



18 TEACHIXG SCHOOL-CHILDREN TO THINK. 

The child needs to be encouraged to put forth its own 
thoughts and sentiments. Since older people often lack 
the " courage of their convictions," why wonder if children 
often hesitate to give utterance or even to allow play to 
the genuine movement of their own minds in regard to 
the matters presented to them. Childhood has so many 
strange words to learn the meaning of, and so many state- 
ments to accept on authority, that it may naturally enough 
fall into a habit of accepting without question what is 
furnished to it, and repress the action of its own intelli- 
gence. 

This abnormal result of educational discipline is re- 
marked by Preyer, who finds the child even before lan- 
guage an original investigator, and describes him as one 
who "has not been prematurely artificialized by training 
and by suppression of his own states of mind; who learns 
of himself to think, just as he learns of himself to see 
and hear." * 

Uneducated people leading a secluded life sometimes 
manifest an originality of mind which may also be due to 
the absence of repression. Thoreau teUs of an ignorant 
woodsman whom he watched with interest becatise he .oc- 
casionally observed that the man was " thinking for himself 
and expressing his own opinion; a phenomenon so rare 
that I wotild any day walk ten miles to observe it." This 
woodsman " took his own view always, or would not pre- 
tend to see." It is this amiable " pretending to see," when 
one is in reality but falling in with the views of others, 
which does much intellectual harm. By all means should 
originality be encouraged. Even to let alone judiciously 
is a part of the wisdom needed in training the forming 
mind. As slowness of perception in children may be due 

* " The DeTelopment of the Intellect." 



TEACHING SCHOOLh^^ILDREX TO THES'K 19 

to an awkwardness in effecting the necessarr co-ordination 
of the different nervous centers employed, so tardiness of 
thought may have its physical basis and natural explana- 
tion. The mind may then be artificialized by being forced 
into action which it is not ready for ; benumbed by the 
necessity, it may respond in a merely mechanical and 
imitative way. 

A certain amount of liberty is desirable, that the mind 
may take its own gait or unfold in its own way. 

For developing the independent or self -helping activity 
of intelligence, the new pedagogy offers methods not lack- 
ing in ingenuity or variety. Justly is great emphasis laid 
on the educational principle which Kant expressed in the 
maxim, " The best way to comprehend is to do." This 
principle was always, indeed, recognized in the importance 
assigned to original composition as an intellectual dis- 
cipline. An effort to express that which has been received 
is the most efficient means of acquainting one's self with 
one's own powers of thought, since 

" Thonghts disentangle, passing o'er the Kps ; 
Speech spreads those beauteous images abroad. 
Which else lie furled and clouded in the souL" 

To promote intellectual activity, expression must con- 
stantly react upon impression. 

But it is especially in the methods now being intro- 
duced into our schools, under the title of " Mantial Train- 
ing," that opportunity is afforded for action, and for the 
manifestation and culture of individuality. These methods, 
indeed, present more than one as]:»ect of utility. They are 
fitted to assist in keeping up a living relation between the 
school-room and the outward world, between books and 
the actions and facts which words describe. They not 
only elicit the interest of the pupil — an interest which may 



20 TEACHING SCHOOL-CHILDREN TO THINK. 

by association be carried over to school- room pursuits less 
attractive to the senses — but it is also easily seen by one 
who watches the efforts of a roomful of children engaged 
in construction with colored papers, or in molding in 
clay, that each one is doing his own work in his own way. 
This spectacle offers a refreshing contrast to that mechan- 
ical drill in concert-exercises which once used to be re- 
garded by many as a notable feature in a well-regulated 
school. And what is here said of the interest excited by 
these methods, leads to the further consideration of the 
important principle that it is not through the intellect 
alone that pupils are to be awakened to think. The feel- 
ings also when awake must be enlisted in behalf of studies, 
and where dormant called into action. 

In seeking to engage an indifferent mind in study, one 
naturally endeavors first to connect the subject with some 
existing interest. In fact, so far as the conditions admit 
of it, the teacher should begin with the pupil where he 
finds him — i. e., where his heart is. He should connect 
the train of ideas he wishes to arouse with some utility the 
boy's mind is alive to, or some sentiment to which he is 
susceptible. A precocious child in Mr. Alcott's school, be- 
ing asked what a schoolmate should do who was thought- 
less and could not command his attention, exclaimed, 
" Then he should set his heart to work ! " 

The heart must be enlisted to secure the best head- 
work. How to do this is a question the answer to which 
may vary according to the circumstances. 

Tolstoi, in his experiments at common-school teaching 
in Russia, found that the school-children were more readily 
interested in social than in physical facts; they found 
difficulty in writing compositions about the most familiar 
objects of sense, but could talk or write freely about what 
occurred in their daily intercourse with other children. It 



TEACHING SCHOOL-CHILDREN TO THINK. 21 

may be that the moral world is often much closer to the 
child's thought and feeling than the physical. 

Is the development of the moral nature of the child 
sufficiently kept in view in our American public-school 
teaching ? Is it not in danger of being lost sight of often, 
in the haste for intellectual results which can be recorded 
and tabulated? 

The problem, How to teach ethics in schools in an in- 
teresting and profitable way, is, to my mind, one which 
can not be solved apart from a consideration of the entire 
aim and system in education. 

The question seems to present little difficulty when the 
school itself is regarded as existing not merely to teach 
how to read or cipher, but, far more broadly, how to live ! 
Such a purpose cherished will not only insure moral teach- 
ing, but unify, elevate, and inspire all its efforts at instruc- 
tion. With this aim in view, the school will naturally 
present in its instruction such a picture of the physical 
and moral universe as will show to the novice somewhat 
how things really go on in the world. But it will not only 
set forth the work of man upon nature, his struggles for 
self-preservation in agriculture and the various forms of 
industry; it will also depict his efforts for something 
better, for self-development on ideal lines, as these efforts 
are put forth in art, literature, science, religion. The 
study of man's dwelling-place, and of the rudiments of 
the arts by which he has made it habitable, gains a uni- 
versal interest when it is made to center around the prog- 
ress of the race toward higher modes and standards of life, 
physical, intellectual, and moral. To make the young 
pupil acquainted with the best aspects of human experi- 
ence, the highest efforts of man to ennoble himself and 
improve his surroundings, is an aim which may well inspire 
the teacher, and impart life and interest to all his instruc- 



22 TEACHING SCHOOL-CHILDREN TO THINK. 

tions. The pupil who feels that by book and teacher he 
is being made acquainted with the world he lives in, and 
the life that is lived to most purpose in it, will not be de- 
ficient in motives for independent intellectual exertion. 

But this branch of our subject, if treated according to 
its suggestiveness, would soon outrun the due limits of this 
address. I^or within such limits could we undertake to 
elaborate any one aspect of this very fruitful topic. 



SULLY'S TWO GREAT WORKS. 



Outlines of Psychology, with Special Reference 
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NOTE. — No American abridgments or editions of Mr. Sully^s toorks 
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12mo, 414 pages. Price, $1.50. 



D. APPLETON & CO., Publishebs, 
New York, Boston, Chicago, Atlanta, San Francisco. 



EDUCATION IN RELATION TO 
MANUAL INDUSTRY. 

By Arthur Mac Arthur, LL. D. 12mo. Cloth, $1.50. 

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INTERNATIONAL EDUCATION SERIES, 

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Vol. VII.— The Senses and the WilL By W. Preyer, Professor 
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